First, a hearty thank you to those who have posted so much valuable information, notably Paul, who posted the original lag fix. His is the one that worked for me, and it was fairly easy really. Eventually.
I am a n00b indeed, having never before dealt with anything remotely Linux. I was so excited to get my first Android phone, the Vibrant, this after having been a staunch BlackBerry user for the past few years. I started reading forums...started seeing things like the GPS problem, the lag problem. AH HA! So I WASN'T imagining these things...
I just had to has root. I'd been hearing about it for so long! It was easy, easier than in days gone by I learned. A .zip file on the SD card then reboot...sheesh. I suppose I'll never know what it was like in the olden days. Piece of cake. I continued to read the forums before really doing much of anything else. One thing I picked up on early...get ROM Manager and do backups. So glad I did...
I've learned the hard way through the years with Windows...backups are good. Very good. Only the most reckless do not have them. Once I got ROM Manager I did a backup...after that, I told myself, I'd continue to try different things. This proved to be wise.
The first time I tried the lag fix...after reading literally hundreds of forum posts, I began to develop a rudimentary understanding of what was going on. Now, making ext3 partitions and such...too much for this feeble mind. But the rest, all about the memory, the essence of the original fix...these things were more clear. I decided to give it a try after reading a bit on ADB etc. However, knowing my proclivity to botch things, I made another backup first, this after having used Root Explorer to get rid of a few useless-to-me programs (read a lot of posts about that too).
Now, being nearsighted and having a high-resolution computer screen isn't always good. Those few-in-number commands to fix the lag...yeah, you guessed it. I blew it the first time I tried it. Gad, it was ugly after rebooting. The horror of seeing error message upon error message! But wait...I made a backup prior. What, I had a choice at this point? Reboot to menu...nandroid...ah, I see it...that's what I want. Oh look! There's the backup I made but moments ago...okay, pick the right one...
Glorious! The restore worked! Like nothing ever happened. Amazing. Okay...back to ADB to punch in the commands, ever so slowly. Hey, no error messages this time, this with übercareful typing. Reboot...no error messages...sweet screaming bovines! It worked. My Vibrant is stupid fast now! Wouldn't have thought it possible. I can live with this until the Froyo ROM's start popping up.
The moral of my tome...these "hacks," if you will, can work magic. To you n00bs like me, it WILL work. Be careful and deliberate in what you do. Read many forum posts first. And above all, if you has to has the root, BACKUP. Pay the $4 for something like ROM Manager and Charlie Yankee Alpha.
My Vibrant is screaming fast, /dbdata is only half full and I've installed a whole stinkload of apps to play with. Thanks for the learning folks; I appreciate it. I'll never be a chef or a guru, but with some help I can get by and have a heckuvalotta fun.